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Indiana now requires Medicaid enrollees to work to keep coverage

Indiana now requires Medicaid enrollees to work to keep coverage

Indiana has become the second state to require some Medicaid enrollees to work if they want to keep their coverage, extending President Trump’s push to revamp taxpayer-funded insurance without help from Congress.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar — in one of his first major acts since being sworn — announced the changes in renewing Healthy Indiana, a state program that put a conservative spin on President Obama’s vast expansion of Medicaid coverage to able-bodied adults.

Kentucky last month became the first state to require Medicaid benefits to work, part of a historic shift in how Washington oversees Medicaid — an outgrowth of the Great Society ushered in by President Lyndon B. Johnson a half-century ago.

Mr. Obama frowned on work requirements, but the Trump administration took the opposite view and encouraged states to condition benefits on pursuing a job or other forms of community engagement, such as volunteering or attending school.

Democrats are furious, saying the changes and its reporting requirements will knock people out of coverage, yet Mr. Azar said Medicaid should be viewed as a useful step toward getting out of poverty, and that people deserve the “sense of purpose often obtained through work.”

Mr. Azar said 11 other states are interested in establishing work requirements.

Indiana will require nonexempt Medicaid enrollees to work or engage in some form of community engagement for 20 hours per week for eight months out of the year. Certain groups, such as pregnant women, students and the medically frail, are exempt from the requirements, leaving about 130,000 out of 440,000 Healthy Indiana participants subject to the new rules.

“This is actually a limited piece of the Medicaid program, but it is a huge population all by itself,” Mr. Azar said.

Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, did not attend the announcement because she’s recused herself from Indiana’s waiver process.

As a private consultant, she helped Vice President Mike Pence — who was Indiana governor at the time — design the underlying Healthy Indiana program in 2015.

Neighboring Kentucky will begin to phase in its work requirements this summer. The plan requires many adults on Medicaid to perform 80 hours of community engagement per month and pay income-based premiums of $1 to $15.

Democrats and allied groups say the push is part of Mr. Trump’s attempt to “sabotage” Mr. Obama’s efforts to make government-funded health insurance more accessible.

They say Medicaid recipients who do not work would like to, but they’re trying to get healthy first.

“In his first major act since joining the administration, Secretary Azar has given Indiana the green light to discriminate against low-income Americans who are just trying to stay healthy and get ahead,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat. “Policies that lock people out of the health care system for months at a time or place onerous barriers in the way of coverage do not make Medicaid better at providing health care. It just makes families’ lives more difficult — period.”

Fifteen Medicaid enrollees in Kentucky filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration last month, alleging the waiver flouts the objectives of Medicaid law.

“Part of the legal challenge is that an executive branch demonstration authority should not be used to make extra-statutory changes to the Medicaid program,” he said. “If multiple states are all pursuing these waivers, at some point it’s no longer a demonstration, it is just a change to Medicaid law without going through Congress.”

Back when i was active, we had over 2 dozen female civilians, many who worked on base while pregnant all up to their 7th month.. AND ONE did it till she was ORDERD to go on bed rest near her 8th month..
IF THEY CAN WORK, so too can those whiners and leeches..

why shouldn’t pregnant women work? unless you are physically unable to do physical labor then woman should work to receive help. If they can’t work at paying job they can volunteer at many different organizations to help others. People have to stop thinking they are entitled to government handouts!

“ENTITLED” is EXACTLY what many of these people feel. I fell on hard times and was in the “system” for a while and saw, first hand, the entitlement attitude. MANY who have Medicaid coverage, don’t speak English nor want to. Also complain that they have to wait, in the dr’s office, for the dr to diagnose them with ADD or ADHD or something so that they now have a “medical condition” and are “unable” to work. Now they get to collect SSI (ie: free money) in the amount of about $750 cash a month. Along with EBT (food stamps) $200 a month, a free cell phone, section 8 housing ( pays 70% of the rent), utilities subsidies, free food – laundry detergent – diapers – dog food – toilet paper- from food panties, meals from the local church while complaining that it’s chicken or pasta again.

Mind you, the only requirement I needed was a utility bill (ie: cell phone, electric, cable…) addressed to me in the county I lived. No SS card, license or passport. NOT having to prove I was a citizen.

I actually put on weight while I was “getting my sh*t” together. I worked my way out of it but was ASTOUNDED at the entitlement attitude of 85% of the people I met.

I received a breakdown of benefits from the state, $17000 and change in 1 year for a single guy.
Why bother bettering yourself when you can get MORE than you need to get by for free.
Also, much of that SSI money is going to the liquor stores & drug dealers.

I agree Gos. The way our entitlement system is set up, once you get on, you are almost ADDICTED to all the free ‘phat loot’ they hand out, so you never want to get off.. WHY whe you earn MORE on welfare than you ever would in the civilian sector.. IIRC one of the local stations did an actual comparison on it for for Jackson MS, and another compared iirc Milwaukee Wi..
Someone on all those entitlements, would have to earn $13.50/hr for a full 40hr work week, to break even. AND that’s not taking into account anything they would have to pay out for child care costs..
It went up to somewhere just past $16/hr for Milwaukee, if i remember that article..

First item to reduce the Medicaid rolls would be to require Citizenship proof to get the benefits. Then enroll citizens in a “health care plan with a cost of $10 copay per individual’s visit to any non-hospital health care facility – $20 for a visit to an ER.

The problem with ALL “entitlements” is the people who think they are “entitled” have NO skin in the game. It would be eye-opening to see how few would even pay this minimal sum for access to the health care they are “entitled” to.